


Come Back For Me

by SophiaCatherine



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: (by the end anyway), (only a brief bit of whump and not graphic), -stares at tags- I write the weirdest mix of things, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff, M/M, Post-Oculus Leonard Snart, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:28:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23264728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SophiaCatherine/pseuds/SophiaCatherine
Summary: 3+2+1. Len comes back for Mick three times, and doesn’t come back for him twice. And then, one last time, Mick comes back for Len.
Relationships: Mick Rory/Leonard Snart
Comments: 16
Kudos: 84





	Come Back For Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blueelvewithwings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueelvewithwings/gifts).



> So, funny story… This prompt is from ages ago, and I forgot this was blueelvewithwings‘ prompt, and made her beta read her own gift fic. And it turns out we both forgot it was her prompt. So, uh, sorry, blueelvewithwings. Hope you enjoyed it anyway and thanks for excellent beta reading of your gift! :D

1.

Len gets out of juvie before Mick. Short sentence, all things considered. 

(He learned that lesson well: don’t piss off your father on a job. He told Mick the story mere minutes after meeting him. “Unbelievable, what they get you for. They charged me with joyriding, for fuck’s sake. Can you believe my asshat of a court-appointed lawyer pled guilty to _that_?”

And Mick said, “Shut it, you mouthy little shit - I’m trying to stop the bleeding here.”)

But with arson and multiple counts of manslaughter on his rap sheet, Mick’s sentence could go on till he ages out of here. Especially if he doesn't stop antagonizing the guards and setting trash alight in the yard. He’s got at least another year left of this shitshow. 

Mick’ll be fine, Len tells himself from his bunk, watching his friend silent at the window. Mick knows how to survive in here. Not like Len, who’s had to hang off Mick for six shitty months, letting everyone think they’re fucking. (As if. Len’s _fourteen,_ and Mick thinks about fire the way most people think about sex - and vice versa.) If Mick can take care of Len, he can take care of himself. Right?

At the window, Mick is running a lighter down the bars. The past week, he’s been quieter than Len’s ever seen him, and he was plenty quiet enough before that. Every day in here is screwing with his head a little more, and not just because he can’t set light to anything.

Len saunters up to the window, following the line of Mick’s gaze out to the grim yard, where Grieg is taking his frustrations out on some poor new bastard. The guards will let him get on with it until it turns really bloody. Len stills Mick’s fidgeting fingers against the bars, lacing his own through them. “I’m coming back,” he says firmly. “I’m gonna be waiting at those gates in a year. Then we’ll both be out of here, yeah?”

Mick turns his head, smiling like he trusts Len more than anything else in this shithole of a world. “I know,” he says.

A year and three weeks later, the gates slide open to the music of a warning buzzer, and Mick shuffles through them. Len is leaning on the edge of the fence trying to look casual, but he can’t keep the smirk off his face. “What did I tell you?” he crows.

Grinning, Mick pushes past him. His touch may be a little rough, but it’s far from casual. “Yeah, yeah, you made it. Congrats, asshole. Now make yourself useful and get us home.”

Inclining his head, Len steps to the right, revealing an Audi shiny enough to melt the eyes of every shitty guard in the Iron Heights Juvenile Detention Wing. There's maybe a bit more pride in his voice than he means to give away, when he says, “Told you I was too good to get caught for petty _joyriding_.”

Mick throws back his head and laughs. 

As they climb into the car, Mick says, “Hey, Lenny. Thanks for coming to get me.”

Len grins. “Always.”

  
2.

It’s late when Len’s phone buzzes on his nightstand, jerking him out of sleep. Even at 3 in the morning, he’s on the very edge of alertness. The habit doesn’t do his temper any favors, but it’s been keeping him alive all his life. He only regrets it occasionally. Like now.

He gropes for the phone in the dark. Blurry words light up like a neon sign above a dive bar.

_Blew out a tyre._

Len pats the nightstand for his glasses. He’s tempted to berate Mick for his terrible driving, or for being out at 3am. A darker place in Len’s cold heart would just love to ask Mick if he’s been driving drunk.

Sighing, Len sends back a single sentence.

_On my way._

The phone buzzes again with an Apple Maps link and an irritating animated broccoli giving a thumbs-up.

The map link takes Len to a country road just past Keystone. He can barely see against the rain, but finally he makes it.

Mick is sitting on a covered bench at a bus stop, stuffing his face out of a half-empty box of donuts. “You made it,” he yells, his voice just carrying over the din of rain on a tin roof. He sounds surprised.

Len darts under the shelter. “What are you doing out here, Mick?” He's trying to sound every bit the hard-nosed boss keeping his underling in line, but somehow it comes out like a gentle sigh.

Mick looks up at Len with the face of a kid caught with his head in the cookie jar. “I wanted donuts.” He points at the road near his overturned motorcycle. “There was a pothole.”

“Yes,” Len says with exaggerated patience. “You’re out in the middle of the country, at night, on a road with no lights, in a storm. There probably was.”

Mick nods solemnly, like he’s really learning from this predicament.

“Is there a reason why you didn’t get donuts from the corner store a block from the safe house?” Blank face. Len tries again. “Why go way out past _Keystone,_ Mick?”

Something unfamiliar crosses Mick’s face, gone again before Len can try to read it. Mick slides along the bench, patting the space next to him. Len sits, huddling into his partner’s warm side against the rain.

Oddly quiet, Mick says, “They’re tearing down my old farmhouse. Wanted one last look before they turn it into apartments for rich bastards, y’know?”

Len sighs, reaching out to clap Mick on the back. “Sorry, buddy.”

“Yeah.” They sit there for a minute longer, just staring out into the rain.

Till Mick stands up, grabbing the soggy box. “Bringing these back for Axel,” he says, conspiratorially revealing three rainbow-frosted donuts huddling at the corner of the box.

“I’m sure he’ll appreciate it.” Len pats Mick on the shoulder. “C’mon, buddy. Let’s go home.”

“Thanks for coming to get me,” Mick says, as he climbs onto the back of Len’s bike.

Len shrugs, casual, but he's smiling into the darkness. “Always.”   
  


3.

The warehouse is all but empty. For a horrible, interminable moment, Len thinks he might be too late.

Stumbling in the half-light, he hears a yelled out, “Over here, boss!” from one of the crew. 

He pushes past him, towards the only thought in his head. _Mick._

The rival gang have done a number on him. The whole right side of his face is purple. Len doesn’t want to see what’s lurking under his once-white shirt, now brown with dirt and dried blood. Mick is curled in on himself on the floor, groaning. 

“He’s hardly conscious, boss,” someone says.

Len shoves him away. “Get out. Give me a minute.”

When the crew’s gone, when Len is alone with Mick, only then does he run his hand down the side of Mick’s face that isn’t speckled with ugly bruises. 

Mick’s eyes flutter open. “You came,” he croaks.

Len’s planning brain is already spinning into overdrive, calculating exactly how he's going to take out the bastards that did this. He’s gonna make it messy and brutal. 

But right now, he just strokes Mick’s face and murmurs, “Always.”

* * *

+1.

In this business, a job can go one of three ways.

There are the successful grand heists, the celebrate-for-weeks jobs. Where your crew get out with the score, nothing worse than minor scrapes, and a treasure trove of stories to tell for years to come. 

Then there are the close calls, the just-get-out-with-your-ass-in-one-piece jobs. Where you scrape out with what you came for, but not without damage.

And there are the ones that go like _this_ disaster of a job. Throw-away-the-plan jobs. Burn-the-score-and-run jobs. Jobs where your crew don't make it out to tell the tale… Not all of them.

As Len watches, a warehouse packed to the rafters with art is going up in flames. Of fucking course it is — because Mick is inside.

He’s burning up right along with the score, too lost in the flame even to make a sound. The horror has already had Len doubled over retching — and now he’s about to walk the fuck away. Every muscle in his body is screaming where Mick is silent, trying to fix him to the spot, but Len is _walking away._

He’s straining hard to hear anything above the roar of the bright monster consuming his world from the inside, but there's still no word from Mick.

“I’m coming back for you,” he whispers over his shoulder, and it feels like he’s being ripped in two. 

In thirty years of partnership, it’s the first lie he’s ever told Mick.  
  


+2.

He's chained to a rail on Chronos’ ship, the one place he deserves to be. 

Mick is empty-eyed, his helmet heavy in his hands. 

Len says, “I was always, _always_ coming back for you,” and his lies are a hollow echo in his ears. Like a whisper in a burning warehouse. Like a broken promise.

He doesn't know the man looming over him. That can't be his pyromaniac, chilling Len to the bone with that cold stare at his betrayer.

That first lie he told his partner was too easy. Now they’re sliding out one after the other, smooth and comfortable. _We’re just here to steal. We’ll go home soon. This crew don’t mean as much to me as you do, Mick._

_I was coming back for you._

“No,” Mick says. “You weren’t.”

In all his life, Len has never run out of words. He thought he could talk himself out of the fires of hell if he had to. Turns out, he can’t. 

There are no more empty promises left in him.

* * *

++1.

He doesn’t think years exist, not really, in this time-forsaken place. But if they do, they pass. And pass. And pass.

He waits at the edge of time, on the dark horizon of the multiverse. Even if he doesn't know what he's waiting for. 

At first he thinks he's imagining it. Movement, where nothing has moved in eons. Light, where he's only ever known darkness. God knows he's hallucinated enough nightmares here, beside the twisted wreck of the Oculus that plays out a thousand lifetimes in his brain, on an endless repeating loop, till he's at the vanishing point of his sanity.

But then there’s a rumbling earthquake, a hole being ripped in the universe, and he knows it's real. 

Someone’s coming for him.

Then he’s on the ground, and Time is shaking him to pieces.

And Mick — _Mick_ — is on the ground with him, holding him together. 

“You came back for me,” he croaks. It feels like he hasn’t spoken in centuries.

“‘Course I did, Lenny.” Mick’s voice — _God, Mick’s voice_ — is surprised, like it was never even a question. “Always.”

Len reaches through the chaos for more words and comes up empty. There’s only Mick. “You came back for me.” 

With wide, shining eyes, Mick just repeats, “Always.”


End file.
